The August Complex-South area soil burn severity map, courtesy of the US Forest Service. NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Burned Area Emergency Response, or BAER, specialists recently completed their data gathering and verification fieldwork of the August Complex-South burn area.
Across all of its zones, the August Complex was up to 1,028,601 acres burned and 75 percent contained as of Sunday night, according to the US Forest Service.
Officials said the soil burn severity map has been finalized. Soil burn severity levels are unburned/very low, low, moderate and high.
The map shows that in the August Complex-South fire area, approximately 52 percent of the 521,256 acres analyzed by the BAER team is either unburned/very low (9%) or low (43%) soil burn severity, while 44 percent sustained a moderate soil burn severity, and only 4 percent burned at high soil burn severity.
Of the land assessed, 416,301 acres, or 79.9 percent, is owned by the Forest Service, 90,288 acres or 17.3 percent is held by other owners, 14,660 acres or 2.8 percent is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and 7 acres, less than 1 percent, covers other federal lands.
The BAER post-fire assessment team uses soil burn severity data to identify if there are areas of concern where increased soil erosion, accelerated surface water run-off, and debris flows have the potential to impact human life/safety, property, and critical natural and cultural resources from storm events.
The team consists of Forest Service scientists and specialists who are considering emergency stabilization options for those critical resources on National Forest System lands.
The BAER team shares it analysis and findings with interagency cooperators who work with private land and business owners to help them prepare for upcoming rain events.
BAER Team Leaders Luke Rutten and Kendal Young said, “The BAER team expects erosion and run-off within the August Complex-South fire area to moderately increase as a result of the fire because 48 percent of the burned area experienced moderate or high soil burn severity.”
In specific areas that experienced moderate to high soil burn severity, there is concern for increased post-fire run-off from steep hillslopes and resultant increases in post-fire soil erosion and debris flows.
The August Complex-South soil burn severity BAER map, shown above, can be downloaded at the interagency August Complex Post-Fire BAER InciWeb site as a JPEG or PDF version under the “maps” tab.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – State Controller Betty T. Yee has published 2019 self-reported payroll data for California special districts on the Government Compensation in California website.
The data cover 164,981 positions and a total of nearly $9.86 billion in 2019 wages and just under $2.83 billion in health and retirement costs for 3,093 special districts.
Special districts are governmental entities created by a local community to meet a specific need. Data for 2019 show the top 10 districts by total wages are in health care, transit, utility, water, and fire districts. Nine of the top 10 individual salaries reported are in health care districts.
The state controller also maintains and publishes state and California State University salary data.
California law requires cities, counties and special districts to annually report compensation data to the state controller.
In Lake County, the site reported there are 28 special districts with 413 employees, wages totaling $10,481,433 and $3,402,464 in retirement and health contributions.
The top 10 largest special districts in Lake County are as follows:
– Lake County Fire Protection District: 48 employees; wages, $1,828,737; retirement and health contributions, $842,697. – Kelseyville Fire Protection District: 42 employees; wages, $1,581,252; retirement and health contributions, $434,497; – Northshore Fire Protection District: 37 employees; wages, $1,319,098; retirement and health contributions, $431,851. – Hidden Valley Lake Community Services District: 18 employees; wages, $1,045,225; retirement and health contributions, $426,752. – Clearlake Oaks Water District: 27 employees; wages, $938,687; retirement and health contributions, $269,991. – Lakeport Fire Protection District: 30 employees; wages, $853,883; retirement and health contributions, $366,648. – Lake County Vector Control District: 16 employees; wages, $613,495; retirement and health contributions, $245,225. – Konocti County Water District: 17 employees; wages, $539,485; retirement and health contributions, $157,757. – Cobb Area County Water District: 18 employees; wages, $336,431; retirement and health contributions, $50,094. – Lower Lake County Waterworks District No. 1: 14 employees; wages, $303,632; retirement and health contributions, $61,421.
An additional special district in Lake County, the Anderson Springs Community Services District, didn’t file information for 2019, according to the site.
A list of districts that did not file or filed incomplete reports is available here.
Since the GCC website launched in 2010, it has registered more than 12 million pageviews. The site contains pay and benefit information on more than two million government jobs in California, as reported annually by each entity.
Users of the site can view compensation levels on maps and search by region, narrow results by name of the district or by job title, and export raw data or custom reports.
As the chief fiscal officer of California, Controller Yee is responsible for accountability and disbursement of the state’s financial resources. The controller has independent auditing authority over government agencies that spend state funds.
Gloria Scott. Courtesy photo. LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Here’s a nice Dr. Feelgood read for you. We have quite yet another star in the Lake County constellation.
She is a singer/songwriter who went on the road with Dick Clark’s Rock & Roll Road Show. Her first record was produced by Sly Stone. She worked her way up the ranks of Ike & Tina Turner’s review as an Ikette. Tina Turner mentions her in her acclaimed biography.
She signed with Barry White’s Soul Unlimited label and has recorded an album produced by him.
With an underground following in Europe since one of her recordings was re-released in London, she had played the acclaimed Baltic Soul Weekender for 14 consecutive years until the dread COVID-19 stopped that festival in its tracks this year
Gloria Scott lives in Nice, California, and is still making music. She recently shared her story with Lake County News.
Of course, the first question was how did she come to land in Lake County?
“I lived and entertained in Guam for a while. I became good friends with Dianne, wife of the bass player, George Rawls, in the band I was singing in. We stayed in touch and a couple of years ago I was looking for a place and Dianne started helping me look. Suddenly, her rental property became available and that’s where I’m staying now. Dianne is one of my best friends,” Scott explained.
Like Janis Joplin, Gloria Scott was born in Port Arthur, Texas. At 9 months of age, she was moved to Houston where her first musical memories of being in church happened.
“My mom was very musical,” she said. “As a matter of fact, we’d have to go to church all day long. I would fall asleep and hear my mother sing and wake up. When she would finish singing, I would fall back to sleep. Later in life, she told me she once sang on a Gospel show with Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers. But she decided to have a family and married very young. So her work with Sam Cooke was before she was married.”
The piano lessons the young Gloria started at the age of 10 were curtailed early on when they became too expensive for the household.
Barry White’s Soul Unlimited label signed Gloria Scott, who recorded an album produced by him. Courtesy photo. “I did learn a little bit though, and later on started teaching myself chords. So that’s how I started writing songs. I still dabble a little bit. In fact, I currently play for a little church in Lucerne,” she said.
Gloria and her family moved to California in 1960, initially East Palo Alto then Sunnyvale. It was in Sunnyvale where she met Sly Stone.
“The first time I saw him was through my aunt when we first moved to East Palo Alto,” Scott said. “We stayed with her until we found our own place. My aunt, Centranella Boulding, had a rehearsal of her Gospel group at her place. The group consisted of Sly, his sister Rose, their cousin, and my Aunt Centranella. I was 14 years old at the time. The next time I saw Sly was at a school dance during summer school. Sly and his group at the time, The Mojo Men, were playing. My friend got Sly’s attention, pointed to me and told him, ‘She can sing.’
“‘Well, come on up here and sing then,’ he said. So I got up there and sang Gee Whiz. I must’ve impressed him because he started taking me around to sing at their gigs in the Bay Area. I don’t know that I put two and two together about the first time we met or not. It became clearer later,” she said.
“Sly became the first person to take me into the studio and produce me when I recorded ‘I Taught Him’ and ‘Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You’ as Gloria Scott & the Tonettes. When we played one of many Rock & Roll shows at the Cow Palace, the Tonettes were Sly, his Sister Rose, and their cousin La Tonya. I met Marvin Gaye and Betty Everett at the Cow Palace show. When San Francisco-based Bobby Freeman, who was also being produced by Sly, heard ‘Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You,’ he told Sly, ‘I want you to write me a song like that.’ That’s when they came up with ‘The Swim.’ Bobby Freeman was a gifted singer and performer. We shared the bill at many dances and sock hops during that time. Sly looked out for me and didn’t want anybody messin’ with me,” Scott said.
After working with Sly Stone, and other Bay Area artists including John Turk and Clifford Coulter, Scott worked jobs and sang at night and on weekends.
“Eventually, I met Charles Sullivan, whose nickname was the ‘Mayor of Fillmore.’ He was the most successful independent booking agent on the West Coast. He had the lease on the Fillmore Auditorium before Bill Graham. He heard me sing and told me that he wanted to introduce me to some people. One night I got a call from him asking me to come down to the Fillmore Auditorium. When I got there, I auditioned for Ike & Tina Turner. They hired me and took me to L.A. immediately,” Scott said.
“I worked with them for about nine months. It was really a good experience despite my not having the stomach for Ike Turner’s shenanigans. I think he was kind of demonic, actually. I can probably tell some stories that have never been told,” she explained.
“I didn’t start working with them right away. I hung around for a few weeks and said, ‘I wanna go home.’ I wasn’t on the show. I was only singing at auditions which Ike Turner held frequently. I went back to the Bay Area and got another call from Ike who wanted to send me and another group of women as the Ikettes out on a Dick Clark Tour. Ike had four or five sets of Ikettes of which I was in one set. I remember Ike and Tina came to our show after I had moved back to the Bay Area. Later, when I moved to L.A. again, Ike came over one day and said, ‘You wanna be an Ikette?’ And with as much excitement as I could muster I replied, ‘Yes, I wanna be an Ikette!’ What happened was the girls on the Dick Clark tour were making more money than the real Ikettes which made them so mad they quit,” Scott recalled.
“Tina really liked me and eventually she let me sing lead on most of the Ikettes songs because I had found the other girls. She even mentions me in her book. I had my own place when I worked with them, but before I was an Ikette, I stayed at their house. My mom had a café in the Bay Area and I took Tina there when we played the Bay. As an Ikette I did a lot of gigs. We were always going somewhere. The final straw for me came when we missed the bus when we were flying to Houston. Ike said, we would have to fly ourselves and be fined one night’s pay. We already weren’t making much money and I said, ‘If he fines me, I’m gonna quit,’” she said.
“I remember Tina recounting to me that she said to Ike, ‘Gloria said if you fine them, she’s going to quit.’ Ike’s response was, ‘Let the bitch quit then.’ And that’s just what I did. I went back to the Bay Area and worked in retail. A friend of mine convinced me to move back to Southern California. I met my songwriting partner, Herman Chaney, in L.A. and after we wrote a few songs, I got a gig doing entertainment for the Job Corps.
“As I went on the road, Herman said he wanted to introduce me to this guy who was interested in a song of ours. We did about 60 shows in 30 days. When I got back home we went right down to Soul Unlimited on Sunset Boulevard. I met Barry White there and played my songs for him and right then and there he said, ‘I’m gonna sign you as an artist. He signed me to a seven-year artist’s contract.
“And though we didn’t do any of my songs, he did put a lot of arranging and orchestration work on the album he produced and arranged for me which was called, ‘What Am I Gonna Do.’ It made a big splash in Germany though it didn’t do so much here. It was on the Casablanca record label. It was only the second album they ever released. The first was by the shock rockers, Kiss. I was at Casablanca before Donna Summer and the P-Funk group Parliament.
“While I was under contract to Barry White, he kind of left me on the shelf. I was working with this guy at Motown and he introduced me to Mary Wilson of the Supremes. I auditioned for her show and she said, ‘Well, we like your singing but you have to lose some weight because we can’t afford to buy more gowns.’ So, I lost about 30 pounds and worked with her about two years; recording and performing. Interestingly, Barry frowned on me working in clubs.
“Meanwhile though, they were playing my album in Europe and I didn’t know. Years passed before I found out. I was living and working in Guam and I met the owner of a club called the Underground and he said, ‘Your name sounds familiar.’ The next time I saw him he had printed out a list of songs that were charting in London and a single of mine titled ‘A Case of Too Much Lovemakin’ from the ‘What Am I Gonna Do’ album had been re-released,” Scott said.
Before COVID-19, Scott had been singing at various music events in Lake County, sitting in with top-shelf locals like Rob Watson and Howard Reggie Dawkins.
“I’m still hoping to get booked at the casinos if the restrictions on live performing ever get lifted,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m staying busy by creating a line of designer face masks which people have expressed an interest in.”
For booking, Ms. Gloria Scott can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
T. Watts is a music journalist who lives in Lake County, California.
Gloria Scott now makes her home in Lake County, California. Courtesy photo.
Ants enjoying the nectar of a zucchini plant's flower. Photo by Kathleen Scavone. LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Who knew that ants were such fascinating creatures?
I enjoyed a Zoom talk hosted by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority's Merav Vonstak, PhD recently, who related that there are 12,000 to 15,000 ant species worldwide.
When I think of the masses of ants that had silently invaded my home during an extended vacation years ago, it looked as if every one of the 15,000 ant species had congregated in my kitchen!
They had chosen a houseplant as their home base where their ant excavations were taking place in the planter's soil. Needless to say, that plant now lives far away from the kitchen!
Dr. Vonstak pointed the Zoom class towards an ant data website called www.antmaps.org.
If you hover the cursor over California it shows that we have 281 native ant species in our state; and by moving the cursor “around the world” it gives you an idea of the diversity of ant critters worldwide.
Ants are highly organized in their social structure, or “eusocial.” They display cooperative brood care and they have an organized division of labor where some ants “empty the trash” that may have accumulated in the nest, while some ants are fighters and will defend their domain.
The life cycle of the ant includes egg, larva, pupa then adult metamorphosis. Each colony contains at least one queen who is distinguished by her large eyes and large thorax and abdomen.
The queen may live up to two years unless it's a harvester or carpenter ant, then she may reach the ripe old age of 30 years. Male ants also possess large eyes which enable him to find a mate.
Worker ants are sterile; they cannot lay eggs. The workers, who may live only weeks, vary in size since there are minors, medians and majors.
Most ant species are omnivores, however, some species specialize, and prefer fruit, nectar or seeds. Some ant species are a boon to the garden as they dine on pesky aphids.
If you want to sneak a peek at ant life, they can easily be found in most habitats, nesting under rocks or downed tree limbs.
Harvester ants will be busily gathering seeds near grasslands, while big carpenter ants live inside decomposing logs or in dead trees.
The ants around my deck will want to watch out for fence lizards that I've seen gobbling them up like Pacman!
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, freelance writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.”
The Glass fire as mapped by Cal Fire on Saturday, October 10, 2020. NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Firefighters on the Glass fire had another day of significant containment gains on Saturday while the August Complex continued to add more acreage.
Cal Fire said the Glass fire, burning for two weeks in Napa and Sonoma counties, stayed at 67,484 acres for the second day, with containment up to 86 percent by Saturday night.
The fire has destroyed 1,555 structures and damaged 282 others, Cal Fire said.
Officials said the fire continues to threaten 2,560 structures.
On Saturday there was smoldering heavy fuels and minimal activity over the entire Glass fire Area, Cal Fire said.
The demobilization of resources continues, Cal Fire said, with resources anticipated to be released based on the current fire and weather situation. These measures ensure that the number and type of resources assigned to the incident match the current operational needs.
As a result, Cal Fire said the number of personnel on Saturday was reduced to 1,135, along with 130 engines, 16 water tenders, seven helicopters, 17 hand crews, 11 dozers and two masticators.
The fire remains on track to be fully contained by Oct. 20.
August Complex adds 3,000 more acres
Elsewhere around the region, the August Complex grew by about 3,000 acres to a total of 1,026,947 acres on Saturday night, with containment at 69 percent, the US Forest Service said.
The lightning-caused complex, which began on Aug. 17, is burning on the Mendocino, Shasta-Trinity and Six Rivers National Forests.
The Forest Service said firefighters are continuing mop up along a slopover area northeast of Lake Pillsbury, near Bloody Rock.
On the west side of the South Zone, fire continues to back out of the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness onto Cal Fire Direct Protection Area. The Southwest Area Incident Management Team is engaged in a coordinated and collaborative response with Cal Fire to support suppression actions to protect local communities at risk, officials said.
The Forest Service said firefighters are patrolling the eastern side of the South Zone with aircraft. Fire crews and engines are patrolling the southern and western perimeter of the South Zone.
Minimal fire behavior is expected as cooler temperatures and increased relative humidity continue through the weekend. However, officials said some smoke is expected to remain visible in areas as heavier fuels like logs and stumps continue to hold heat and the fire burns through pockets of previously unburned vegetation within the fire’s perimeter.
Firefighters are evaluating areas across the South Zone to identify and prioritize suppression repair needs. The Forest Service said crews have begun ordering equipment and personnel to support suppression repair efforts in the coming days.
The complex is expected to be fully contained on Nov. 15.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
The August Complex as mapped on Saturday, October 10, 2020. Map courtesy of the US Forest Service.
The Supreme Court will face another challenge to the Affordable Care Act that is more likely to succeed with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Meanwhile, Trump recently released his “America-First Healthcare Plan.” In it, the president claims significant achievements. He also outlines broad principles of his vision for the future of health care in America.
Since 2016, Congress has made little headway besides eliminating the ACA’s penalty for not carrying insurance. This is the basis for the current lawsuit to be heard before the Supreme Court in November. The argument is that because Congress did away with the penalty, the individual mandate can no longer be constitutionally justified as a tax. As a result, the entire law should fall.
While Republicans have been unable to repeal the law, the Trump administration has taken a number of executive actions to limit its reach. In combination, these efforts have contributed to bringing the uninsured rate to 14% by 2019 from a low of 11% in 2016. This leaves millions of Americans without coverage and exposed to medical bills should they fall ill.
With few details in Trump’s executive order on health care, the plan lays out goals for improved care and lower prices but offers no legal basis for implementing reforms.Brian Blanco via Getty Images
The administration has also worked to expand alternative insurance plans like so-called short-term, limited-duration health plans and association health plans. While these plans have lower premiums, they do not carry the consumer protections of the ACA like preexisting condition coverage. They also do not pay for prescription drugs or hospital stays. And unlike the ACA, they also require consumers to undergo a medical assessment before enrollment. Consumers may be charged higher premiums or rejected entirely based on their medical condition and age.
On one of the president’s other priorities, eliminating surprise bills for medical services that patients unexpectedly receive for care that they reasonably thought would be covered by their insurance, the administration’s actions have yet to have a meaningful effect.
More generally, after years of promising a detailed plan, the America-First Healthcare Plan focuses primarily on past actions. It also spends just 491 words on laying out a set of objectives – lower costs, better care and more choice – yet does not provide a mechanism or road map for how to implement them.
All this leads me to believe that if the ACA is overturned before the Supreme Court, the prospect of substantive replacement that seeks to expand care to more Americans is unlikely.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has several more news dogs of various sizes and breeds available to new homes this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of border collie, Chihuahua, German Shepherd, Great Pyrenees, husky, Labrador Retriever, Papillon and pit bull.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).
This female Labrador Retriever is in kennel No. 8, ID No. 14073. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Female Labrador Retriever
This female Labrador Retriever has a short black coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 8, ID No. 14073.
This male Chihuahua is in kennel No. 11, ID No. 14094. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male Chihuahua
This male Chihuahua has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 11, ID No. 14094.
This male Papillon-Chihuahua mix is in kennel No. 19, ID No. 14084. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male Papillon-Chihuahua
This male Papillon-Chihuahua mix has a medium-length tan and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 19, ID No. 14084.
This young male German Shepherd Dog-Labrador Retriever mix is in kennel No. 21, ID No. 14085. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. German Shepherd Dog-Labrador Retriever mix
This young male German Shepherd Dog-Labrador Retriever mix has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 21, ID No. 14085.
This male pit bull is in kennel No. 22, ID No. 14066. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male pit bull
This male pit bull has a short brown coat.
He is in kennel No. 22, ID No. 14066.
This male Great Pyrenees is in kennel No. 24, ID No. 14077. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male Great Pyrenees
This male Great Pyrenees has a long white coat.
He is in kennel No. 24, ID No. 14077.
This young male border collie is in kennel No. 27, ID No. 14052. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male border collie
This young male border collie has a short black and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 27, ID No. 14052.
This young male husky-German Shepherd Dog is in kennel No. 29, ID No. 14097. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. Male husky-German Shepherd Dog
This young male husky-German Shepherd Dog has a medium-length cream and black coat.
He is in kennel No. 29, ID No. 14097.
“Layla” is a female Labrador Retriever-pit bull mix in kennel No. 30, ID No. 14079. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. ‘Layla’
“Layla” is a female Labrador Retriever-pit bull mix.
She has a short black and white coat and has been spayed.
She’s in kennel No. 30, ID No. 14079.
“Max” is a male pit bull terrier mix in kennel No. 31, ID No. 14078. Photo courtesy of Lake County Animal Care and Control. ‘Max’
“Max” is a male pit bull terrier mix with a short tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He’s in kennel No. 31, ID No. 14078.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Familiar stars shine, nebulae glow, and nearby galaxies tantalize in a new panorama of the northern sky assembled from 208 pictures captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS.
The planet hunter imaged about 75 percent of the sky in a two-year-long survey and is still going strong.
TESS has discovered 74 exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system. Astronomers are sifting through some 1,200 additional exoplanet candidates, where potential new worlds await confirmation. More than 600 of these candidates lie in the northern sky.
TESS locates planets by simultaneously monitoring many stars over large regions of the sky and watching for tiny changes in their brightness.
When a planet passes in front of its host star from our perspective, it blocks some of the star’s light, causing it to temporarily dim. This event is called a transit, and it repeats with every orbit of the planet around the star. This technique has proven to be the most successful planet-finding strategy so far, accounting for about three-quarters of the nearly 4,300 exoplanets now known.
The data collected also allow for the study of other phenomena such as stellar variations and supernova explosions in unprecedented detail.
The northern mosaic covers less of the sky than its southern counterpart, which was imaged during the mission’s first year of operations.
For about half of the northern sectors, the team decided to angle the cameras further north to minimize the impact of scattered light from Earth and the Moon. This results in a prominent gap in coverage.
TESS map of the northern sky
The northern panorama represents only a glimpse of the data TESS has returned. The mission splits each celestial hemisphere into 13 sectors. TESS imaged each sector for nearly a month using four cameras, which carry a total of 16 sensors called charge-coupled devices, or CCDs.
During its primary mission, the cameras captured a full sector of the sky every 30 minutes. This means each CCD acquired nearly 30,800 full science images.
Adding in other measurements, TESS has beamed back more than 40 terabytes so far – equivalent to streaming some 12,000 high-definition movies.
Remarkably, these numbers will rise sharply over the next year. TESS has now begun its extended mission, during which it will spend another year imaging the southern sky. The satellite will revisit planets discovered in its first year, find new ones, and fill in coverage gaps from its initial survey.
Improvements to the satellite’s data collection and processing now allow TESS to return full sector images every 10 minutes and measure the brightness of thousands of stars every 20 seconds – all while continuing its previous strategy of measuring the brightness of tens of thousands of stars every two minutes.
“These changes promise to make TESS’s extended mission even more fruitful,” said Padi Boyd, the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Making high-precision measurements of stellar brightness at these frequencies makes TESS an extraordinary new resource for studying flaring and pulsating stars and other transient phenomena, as well as for exploring the science of transiting exoplanets.”
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Francis Reddy works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A second COVID-19 outbreak in a skilled nursing facility in Lakeport has resulted in the county’s 13th death related to the virus, while the county’s Public Health officer also reported more than two dozen new confirmed cases across the county.
On Friday, Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace reported that 28 new cases of COVID-19 had been reported countywide, bringing the total to 628.
That’s the second-largest single-day increase in cases reported in Lake County since cases began to be confirmed locally in April, based on a review of data publicly reported by Lake County Public Health.
Pace said late this week Public Health also received word of the county’s 13th COVID-19-related death.
“The individual was over 65 years old and had longstanding health issues,” he said.
This most recent death is connected to an outbreak at a second skilled nursing facility where there are 27 residents who have been infected along with nine staff, Pace said.
A previous outbreak at Lakeport Post Acute resulted in 37 residents getting the virus and 22 staff, with seven residents dying, according to state and local reports.
That initial outbreak, along with community spread, coincided with – and contributed to – a surge in new cases in Lake County, peaking at 78 during the week of Sept. 13 to 19. Pace said evacuations from the LNU Complex fires and Labor Day weekend activities were additional complicating factors.
Pace said the outbreak at Lakeport Post Acute is now under control, with no new cases in 10 days.
Meadowood Nursing Center in Clearlake has no reported cases in residents, and less than 11 in health care workers, the state reported.
On Friday, CDPH said 26,456 residents of California’s 1,223 skilled nursing facilities had tested positive for COVID-19 and 4,557 had died, while 19,989 health care workers in those facilities had contracted the virus, with 152 of them dying.
Statewide, county Public Health departments reported more than 849,000 total cases and just over 16,500 deaths due to COVID-19 as of Friday night.
The state said local health departments have reported 40,758 positive cases in health care workers and 191 deaths statewide.
As of Friday, 15,736,497 tests have been conducted in California, an increase of 112,874 over the prior 24-hour reporting period, the state said.
Pace said it’s predicted that COVID-19 infections will increase in the coming months, due to flu season, colder weather and indoor activities. He is urging community members to get flu shots.
As for when a COVID-19 vaccine would realistically be available, Pace said, “Likely after the first of the year.”
He added, “Initial supplies will be limited, and probably directed to hospital workers and others at highest risk.”
Once supplies increase – possibly in early spring – the vaccine will start to reach the general public, Pace said.
“There is great hope for some sort of normalcy by summertime 2021; the promise of a vaccine is driving those hopes,” he said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
The Glass fire as mapped by Cal Fire on Saturday, October 10, 2020. NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – The growth of the Glass fire has stopped while cooler conditions are helping firefighters on the massive August Complex to continue to increase containment.
Cal Fire said the Glass fire remained at 67,484 acres on Friday night, marking the first day of no growth on the incident since it began on Sept. 27 in Napa and Sonoma counties.
Containment also grew several percentage points to 78 percent, Cal Fire said.
Officials said activity on the fire line on Friday was limited to scattered heat signatures and isolated smoldering heavy fuels across the fire area.
With conditions improving, on Friday the evacuation warnings for two areas south of Middletown in Lake County were lifted and a portion of Highway 29 from Middletown to Tubbs Lane was reopened.
Resources continue to be reduced on the fire. On Friday evening, 1,437 personnel remained assigned to the fire, along with 162 engines, 20 water tenders, 10 helicopters, 23 hand crews, 11 dozers and two masticators, Cal Fire reported.
On Friday night, Cal Fire said 2,560 structures remained threatened by the fire.
Cal Fire said the damage inspection has been completed. The final assessment showed that 638 structures have been destroyed in Sonoma County, including 334 single-family homes, while 917 buildings have been destroyed in Napa County, with 308 of them being homes. In addition, 132 structures were damaged in Sonoma County and 150 in Napa County.
Cal Fire continues to anticipate the fire will be fully contained on Oct. 20.
The August Complex as mapped on Friday, October 9, 2020. Map courtesy of the US Forest Service. New team takes over August Complex South Zone
On Friday, the Southwest Area Type 1 Incident Management Team No. 1 assumed command of the August Complex South Zone, one of four zones on the complex. The other zones are the Northwest, Northeast and West.
The complex was up to 1,023,629 acres and 67-percent containment on Friday night, Cal Fire said. Approximately 4,524 personnel are assigned.
The US Forest Service said that on Thursday, a helicopter dropped water to support dozers and ground crews as they continued to secure the perimeter and mop-up around a 300-acre slop-over northeast of Lake Pillsbury, over the M6 Road near Bloody Rock.
Cooler temperatures and increased humidity are helping reduce fire activity, officials said. Pockets of heat within the fire’s perimeter are expected to continue to smolder. Firefighters will continue to mop up, monitor and patrol along the firelines.
The Forest Service said firefighters are currently assessing suppression repair needs. Suppression repair is a series of immediate post-fire actions taken to repair damages and minimize potential soil erosion and impacts resulting from fire suppression activities.
This work repairs the hand and dozer fire lines, roads, trails, staging areas, safety zones, and drop points used during fire suppression efforts.
For more information on the three phases of wildfire recovery visit this page.
Officials said the No. 1 priority remains firefighter and public safety. They asked that weekend travelers please be cautious while traveling on roads and highways as firefighters and equipment are working in the area.
The August Complex is expected to be fully contained Nov. 15, the Forest Service reported.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – The Yuba Community College District is reporting on its efforts to use renewable energy on its campuses.
The district said it has installed 4 megawatts of solar power and roughly half a megawatt of battery energy storage across five sites since 2012.
Installations include single-axis tracking systems in fields that track the sun throughout the day as well as fixed-tilt carports that provide shade in parking lots.
In fiscal year 2020, the district consumed 6,583,671 kWh of electricity with 92 percent of that total generated by the district’s solar projects.
The last system was commissioned in April 2020 and the district will now generate more than 100 percent of its overall electricity needs from the onsite solar projects.
Generating 100 percent of the annual electricity consumption means the Yuba Community College District is net-zero in its energy consumption.
The district said it has taken a proactive role managing and analyzing the systems and continues to work in partnership with the energy consulting firm ARC Alternatives to help understand the technical and financial performance of the systems.
Through the implementation of ARC Alternative’s Energy Performance Management service, the district is actively tracking each system’s performance, proactively working with operations and maintenance vendors to maximize energy production and receives regular reporting of the realized financial benefits of the solar projects.
“The YCCD Governing Board and leadership is committed to reducing our campuses’ carbon footprint for our students and our communities. Achieving ‘net zero’ with these solar and energy storage projects is not only environmentally responsible, it will continue to result in substantial financial benefit and lowered operating costs so that we can redirect those savings into programs and our students,” said Chancellor Dr. Douglas Houston. “Additionally, YCCD’s use of Clean Renewable Energy Bonds to finance these projects allows the District to apply General Obligation Bonds funds such as Measures J and Q to other important and needed facilities projects that directly impact student success.”
Over the entire life of the solar and storage projects, by the year 2040, it is anticipated that the district see a cumulative net benefit of approximately $19 million assuming an annual utility escalation rate of 3.5 percent.
The district’s leadership commitment to sustainability and investments in renewable energy have positioned the Yuba Community College District to be less reliant on continually escalating and expensive traditional power sources.
These direct investments in on-site renewable generation will continue to generate significant financial savings on utility costs and ultimately result in a positive net benefit to the district with reduced operating costs, officials said.
District officials said they recognize the positive environmental impacts from renewable energy sources and are proud to have taken a large step forward in reducing its carbon footprint.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies” calculation tool the district’s renewable energy projects will avoid roughly 4,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide from traditional power sources.
This is the equivalent greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions from approximately:
– 900 passenger vehicles driven for one year; – 500,000 gallons of gasoline consumed; – 700 homes’ electricity use for one year.
The Yuba Community College District spans eight counties and nearly 4,192 square miles of territory in rural, north-central California. Yuba College and Woodland Community College, offer degrees, certificates, and transfer curricula at college campuses in Marysville and Woodland, educational centers in Clearlake and Yuba City, and through outreach operations in Williams and on Beale Air Force Base. The two colleges in Yolo County and Yuba County and the campuses in Clearlake, Colusa and Sutter counties, serve 13,000 students across the northern Sacramento Valley.
Dennis Fordham. Courtesy photo. What is the legal remedy when one person tortiously (wrongfully) interferes with another person’s estate planning so that an intended beneficiary receives either no or a lesser inheritance?
Since 2012 California has recognized the tort [i.e., a civil wrongdoing] of “Intentional Interference with Expected Inheritance” (Beckwith v. Dahl (2012) 205 Cal.App.4th 1039, 1050-1056.).
This tort applies when someone, “ ‘… by fraud, duress or other tortious means intentionally prevents another from receiving from a third person an inheritance or gift that he [or she] would otherwise have received is subject to liability to the other for loss of the inheritance or gift.’ ” (Beckwith v. Dahl, supra, 205 Cal.App.4th at p. 1050.)
On Sept. 22, 2020, the California’s Third Appellate Department (Shasta) issued its appellate opinion in Louise A. Gomez v. Tammy J. Smith involving the Estate of Frank Gomez (deceased).
The decedent Frank Gomez’s daughter Tammy Smith had prevented him from seeing his own attorney to review and sign a new trust in his deathbed. Smith did not want her father to leave his new wife Louise Gomez a life estate in the father’s residence; it would have delayed Smith’s own inheritance until Louise Gomez died. After Frank Gomez died, his wife Louise sued his daughter.
To win, Louise Gomez had to prove each of these six elements: (1) That she had an expectancy of an inheritance; (2) that the bequest or devise would have been in effect at the time of the death of the testator if there had been no such interference; (3) that the defendant had knowledge of the plaintiff’s expectancy of inheritance and took deliberate action to interfere with it; (4) that the interference involved underlying conduct that was itself wrong other than the fact of the interference; (5) that the interference resulted in damages (i.e., no or a lesser inheritance); (6) that the interference was directed at someone (Frank Gomez) other than the plaintiff (Louise Gomez).
Deciding the case involved a detailed facts and circumstances analysis. Three of the six elements are easy to understand, but the second, third, and fourth elements deserve discussion.
That is, Louise Gomez proved the second element because the bequest would have been in effect because had Tammy Smith not prevented Frank Gomez’s attorney from seeing him at his deathbed then Frank Gomez would have signed a new trust giving Louise Gomez lifetime benefits. Smith would then have had to prove that Frank Gomez lacked capacity or was subject to undue influence to overcome the presumption of the trust’s validity.
Next, Louise Gomez proved the third element because Smith knew her father’s intention to take care of his wife and Smith deliberately interfered by preventing Frank Gomez’s attorney from entering into the residence to have him sign the documents.
Lastly, let’s discuss the fourth element that the underlying conduct was wrong in itself. The court’s opinion said that, “[t]he usual case is that in which the third person has been induced to make or not to make a bequest or a gift by fraud, duress, defamation or tortious abuse of fiduciary duty, or has forged, altered or suppressed a will or a document making a gift. Thus one who by legitimate means merely persuades a person to disinherit a child and to leave the estate to the persuader instead is not liable to the child.” (Rest.2d Torts, § 774B, com. c, pp. 58-59.)
Here the court found that, “Tammy indisputably ‘knew of [Frank’s] physical weakness and distress and took actions whereby [she] physically separated [his] attorney from [him] intentionally preventing [Frank] from confirming an estate plan that he had been trying to put in place for months.’ Frank’s will was overborne by Tammy because he was bedridden and unable to intervene when Tammy precluded [Frank’s attorney] Aanestad from entering the home.”
Deathbed estate planning is fraught with risk. It becomes even riskier with deep family divisions that sometimes exist in second marriages between stepchildren and stepparents. It is even more important not to wait to get one’s affairs in order.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, California. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.
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